Florence Price - Rabbit Foot, n. II from the cycle "Three Little Negro Dances" скачать в хорошем качестве

Florence Price - Rabbit Foot, n. II from the cycle "Three Little Negro Dances"

Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith; April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953) was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home. Florence Beatrice Smith was born to Florence (Gulliver) and James H. Smith on April 9, 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Her father was the only African-American dentist in the city, and her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence's early musical training. Despite racial issues of the era, her family was well respected and did well within their community. She gave her first piano performance at the age of four and had her first composition published at the age of 11. In 1902, after high school, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts with a double major in organ and piano teaching. Initially, she passed as Mexican to avoid racial discrimination against African Americans, listing her hometown as "Pueblo, Mexico". At the Conservatory, she studied composition and counterpoint with composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. Also while there, Smith wrote her first string trio and symphony. She graduated in 1906 with honors, and with both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate. In 1910, Smith returned to Arkansas, where she taught briefly and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. There she became the head of the music department of what is now Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college. In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer. She gave up her teaching position and moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas. She could not find work in the by now racially segregated town. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, the Price family decided to leave and settled in Chicago. There Florence Price began a new and fulfilling period in her composition career; she was part of the Chicago Black Renaissance. She studied composition, orchestration, and organ with the leading teachers in the city, including Arthur Olaf Andersen, Carl Busch, Wesley La Violette, and Leo Sowerby. She published four pieces for piano in 1928. While in Chicago, Price was at various times enrolled at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teacher's College, University of Chicago, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music. In 1931, financial struggles and abuse by her husband resulted in Price getting a divorce at age 44. She became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, she worked as an organist for silent film screenings and composed songs for radio ads under a pen name. During this time, Price lived with friends. She eventually moved in with her student and friend, Margaret Bonds, also a Black pianist and composer. This friendship connected Price with writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the art world who aided in Price's future success as a composer. In 1932, both Price and Bonds submitted compositions for the Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize. Early in 1933 leading Arts advocate Maude Roberts George, president of the Chicago Music Association, music critic of the Chicago Defender and eventual national president of the National Association of Negro Musicians, paid $250 (about $5,093 in 2021 dollars) for Price's First Symphony to be included in a program devoted to "The Negro in Music", with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock. George's underwriting made Price the first African-American woman to have her music played by a major U.S. orchestra. In 1940, Price was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers for her work as a composer. On June 3, 1953, Price died from a stroke in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 66. * * The image before the music is After Supper by Horace Pippin, chosen for this video by D. T.